Writing Through Shame with Hannah Sward

Lisa Cooper Ellison [0:00]
Well, Hannah, welcome to the podcast. I am so glad that you’re here today.

Hannah Sward [ 0:03]
Thank you so much, Lisa. It’s such an honor to be invited on.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [0:09]
I’ve really been excited about this episode because I absolutely love your book Strip, so I’m going to hold it up so people can see the cover if they’re watching on YouTube. It is a gripping, intense, and powerful read, and we’re going to dive into some of the details of that through our conversation. However, I always like to give the author the first word. What would you like us to know about you and your book?

Hannah Sward [0:36]
Thank you for the praise, especially coming from you. I really feel like it’s a story about a young woman’s journey about abandoning oneself and coming back to oneself, because I don’t know if I was ever with myself. The title can be just a little deceiving, right? Because it sounds salacious, but it really is about that inner journey.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [1:06]
I was listening to another recording, and I love the double entendre you talked about. So yes, we could think about the salacious piece, because that is a piece of the topic that you’re talking about, and but it really is that stripping away of, I’m going to say, based on my reading—and you can tell me if I’m wrong—the varnish of shame that we put on ourselves that keeps us from really connecting deeply to who we truly are.

Hannah Sward [1:34]
I love the way you articulated that; that’s exactly it. And I never thought that uncovering was possible for me.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [1:42]
And I think that really shows up on the page. You know, to me, one of the things that really struck me was how you were able to compress this huge story into something so compact and tightly written. I think that, for me at least, the brevity of it, especially your chapters, which are very short, intensified its power without overwhelming me.

Hannah Sward [2:08]
Yeah, for the listeners, the chapters really are short. I mean, like, that’s one whole chapter—yeah, one and a half pages.

Yes, that was hard. That was very hard. I love brevity. However, the first draft, I will say, was not written that way, and that wasn’t my initial vision. The first draft was written all handwritten in a journal, you know, a 99-cent journal like this, well, a number of them, and it was one continuous sentence, and I had no idea what shape it was going to take. However, I had been a short story writer before, so I loved the idea of a contained piece. And, being the daughter of a poet, I think something about the shorter form—of course, poetry can be long—but I tend to gravitate to the shortest poems. I love that, and I think that what you’re saying—that the brevity lends itself to the story without overwhelming—something about clipping it along was important to me, because I didn’t want to dwell in the trauma. Yeah, I wanted it to be put out there, but moved along, and because it would be a lot, it was also my experience of it. I did write it like living it. The first draft was one big, long mess, actually, the first 10 drafts. This is important, that I didn’t start wanting to tell the whole story—not just not wanting to, I didn’t think I was going to. I started in adulthood, so the childhood became later, because that is a very long span, from 1975 to 2008 for a memoir.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [4:02]
Yeah, that was one of the things I was very impressed by. And of course, this book won an IPPY. It has also been reviewed in The Los Angeles Times. So, you know, I’m not the only one saying these things. But yeah, it is really hard to pull off a book where the time span is so long, and I do think that the brevity of your chapters helped with that. And I love that you shared some of your process. The fact that it was a single sentence is just wild and yet feels so true. And yet I was listening to another interview with you, and one of the things you said is that it wasn’t something that you wrote at one time—that there was a certain way that you had to write it because of the intensity of the material. What did you do to help yourself write this book? And also, what was your process in continuing that sentence?

Hannah Sward [4:55]
It was a long journey for me because I didn’t start writing it until I was two years sober, and I was so disengaged or disassociated, which I didn’t even know what that word meant. I mean, I knew what it meant intellectually, but I didn’t know what it meant. And I dedicate the book to sitting in the hours, and that had always been my dream—that I could be a woman sitting on the couch alone with myself, because I also knew that was the only way to access connecting with another person. That if I’m not sitting here, I can’t connect with you, and therefore I can’t connect with the page. The book is dedicated to that. 

It took about five years to write that book, and then another five years to publish. I could not have written it any sooner, because I was in therapy. I was in recovery during it, and through the process of outside help, so to speak, and then the process of learning to settle in and sit with myself and put pen to paper, it began, and it was quite excruciating. Sometimes, I would just pick up the pen and write, and I wouldn’t even sit down. I would stand up because my goal was to write two pages a day, handwritten, no matter what. That was my intention—like, really, Lisa, I didn’t care even what I was writing, as long as I was writing. So, I had all these pages; I can’t even tell you. I mean, so many pages, and so much was cut. 

But going back in and the process of transcribing it was, in itself, part of it in terms of starting to see it. You know, it’s interesting, writing memoir, because it’s like, how could you not know the story? It’s your story, right? I mean, write the outline and write the story. I didn’t know what my own story was. So, it’s like, not only don’t I know, but then what do I want to share? And the biggest question was what serves the story and what doesn’t? So much was taken out. As a concrete example, there’s two siblings in the book. In reality, I have seven, all half, and I had written about several of them, and it did not serve the story. And it just got too out here. And because we lived in so many places, and just there was so much chaos, it was like, how do I narrow it down? And again, how does what I’m including serve the story? Yes, and I think the single hardest part was the linking of the story, because I was so disconnected in myself. How do I link? That was the hardest part—the transitions. And it really was simultaneous to my own healing.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [7:56]
I love that answer. And you know, some of the things that I’m hearing in this—and there’s one thing that I do want to come back to, that’s the transcription process—is that you had to allow yourself to go wherever the story took you while you were also healing at the same time. So, the healing helped you connect to yourself, which helped you connect to the page. And then you had this transcription process that you used, and as you did that work, and you got a sense of what your story was, you were able to see what really served it. So, you did a mixture of this kind of macro analysis, you know, the stepping back and saying, like, “Okay, what is my story? What question am I trying to answer? What actually belongs?” And you found that not only was it just specific scenes, but actual people in your life weren’t serving the story. And I think that’s really important for a lot of listeners to hear. If you’re writing a book, yes, certain people might be super important to you, and yet, their appearance in your book may not be doing the work that you hope it is, and so you have to be both compassionate and ruthless at the same time.

Hannah Sward [9:06]
That’s right. And to condense the years as one solid example, there’s one chapter, I think it’s six pages, about a relationship with a man, and in reality, that lasted four or five years. In the book, it clips along because that would have been another whole book.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [9:26]
Right? And you know, when I think about this book, there’s this attachment angle, right? There’s this lack of attachment to self; there’s a lack of attachment to other people. And the fact that that moved so quickly, to me, it made it seem like maybe this relationship was not as important as—probably that’s the wrong word. I could tell that there was care, but that it was easier to detach from it. Like, it wasn’t as deep or profound as it needed to be, and the fact that it sped by helped me see that as a reader.

Hannah Sward [10:02]
Oh, I love that. I’d like to say that that was a conscious decision. It would make me sound so smart, but it really wasn’t. It’s interesting to talk about the book in retrospect, right? Yeah, and you were saying about the transcription process. I really loved that because, first off, the writing, pen to paper, helped me not censor myself. And I needed to get the draft out. I didn’t even actually know I was writing a book at that point. So, I think, you know, that helped, and it also didn’t help because it made it so overwhelming. You know, I had a mentor, and she’s like, “This is a book. This is a memoir.” I’m like, “Oh, well, it’s just not—that’s not what I want to do. I’m a short story writer. I just really… my goal was to write again.” And speaking to what you said about letting it take me where it needed to take. That was it. Especially, I think in our culture, it was really difficult to give myself that time. And other authors, other writers, they were much younger than me, they were publishing books to much acclaim, and it just seemed to be moving really fast. And here I am, and I’m like in my late 40s at this point, and I just felt like I need to move this along, and yet I also knew I needed to honor this process.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [11:25]
Yes, and I’m so glad you just said that, because we live in a very capitalistic society that’s all about production. It’s about doing, and when you have created a product that you can hold in your hand—I mean, of course, that’s very satisfying. I’m not going to say it’s not. It feeds the ego. And yet, there’s so much more to what writing can do for us. And if we focus so much on that end goal, we miss the power of this process. I think that it can lead to work that could be technically outstanding and yet subpar in terms of the insight, right? And that’s not always true, but I do think that that can happen, especially in memoir.

Hannah Sward [12:10]
Yeah, it’s, you know, certainly something I still struggle with to this day. What’s productive enough? What do I value? And in my core, I know what I value. I’m not looking at you and going, “How many books did you publish?” Like, it’s not really—it has nothing to do with that. And yet, I have this like, “Oh, that person published 12 books.” 

Lisa Cooper Ellison [12:32]
I think social media especially gets us to think in those ways. That comparison can be so profound, and then also just the competitiveness of our field. You know, in other jobs, you can work really hard, and if you do, you’re more than likely going to move up the ladder, whatever that ladder is. And yet, when it comes to creativity, there’s the perception of a ladder, you know, in terms of publishing and publishing in certain ways. And you know, is this the big five versus another way? Yes, there’s that perceived ladder, and yet you can work as hard as you possibly can and create something that is absolutely brilliant. And who knows what’s going to happen with that ladder, especially now that things are changing so much? So really being able to focus on yourself, on that sense of being, developing your voice, which I know is a big part of this process for you, is really important. And I’m going to say a couple of things, and I have some questions that are not on the questions I sent to you. So, I love this, because then we get to have this, like, free-flowing conversation, which I know is going to be really helpful to people.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [13:21]
So I talk about this a lot with people, how the first draft is an opportunity to bear witness to your own experience. For many people, especially when trauma is involved, it is your first—or maybe not the first—but for many people, actually, it is an opportunity to see yourself and to see what happened, and then it’s through this revision process that we begin to take our power back. The first draft can feel very disconcerting, destabilizing, very powerless, and then we go through this process of taking our power back because we shape the story. And you did a marvelous job of shaping the story and framing it around a specific traumatic event that echoes and reverberates throughout your book. But if we think about your process in a granular way, I want to dive into this transcription process.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [14:06]
I’m going to tell you what I do, and I’m curious to know what you do, because I think it’s helpful for people to hear this. So, when I’m writing, like you, longhand is my way. Because—my best work comes from longhand because there is an emotional connection to the words that is very different than when I’m typing. Also, I think differently. I can be messier. I can put everything on the margins, and it can go all over the place. 

Hannah Sward [15:02]
Yes! Oh my gosh. I love a good mess. And I still think about your essay in Huffington Post. I think it was about making the mistake—if you haven’t read it, to the listeners, I—that’s what clued me into you. When I read that, I was like, oh, who is this person? I am so there. I’ve made that mistake, and I’ve ended up in a parking lot sobbing.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [15:23]
Emotional flashbacks are no joke, and they impact so many people, and that’s why I wrote that piece, which I wrote longhand.

Hannah Sward [15:32]
When you’re saying that, that’s what I felt. I could feel it when I read it.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [15:37]
Well, thank you. I think it’s so important for all of us to step away from the computer because, you know, I mean, yes, I can type much faster, but there is something powerful in that. And then I do transcribe, and it depends on the length of something. Sometimes I will just type something into the computer, but sometimes I will use Microsoft Word dictation.

I broke my finger a little while ago, and I was forced to learn how to do this. What I love about it is twofold. It does take a little bit of work. So, for instance, if I’m reading, I have to say my sentence, and then period, and then I say the next sentence, and when I get to the end of the paragraph, I have to say, “next line.” It can be a little clunky, but it’s faster than my typing. It can be super fast. Also, I have an opportunity to hear the words out loud, and I can feel in my body when it’s working and when it’s like, “We’ll see what happens with that.” It doesn’t mean I’m going to scrap anything, but, you know, I think in a first draft, one of the things that happens as we revise is that we say things in our first drafts that are the truth, and then our critical editors come in and say, “No, that’s not right. Or that’s, you know, fix that.” But sometimes what it’s telling us to fix is our vulnerability.

Hannah Sward [17:03]
Yes, I love—first of all—that that is how you do it with the pen to paper, what that informs of the rawness and what it captures, and you just don’t know what’s going to come, right? You know, I was doing it this morning, not just to write, but because I just do my journal. Sometimes it’s about, like, what the day was yesterday. Yeah, which I thought was today. I’m like, I’m bored. I know, write the day. And I started writing about office chairs. Now, if I had been at the computer, I’m not sure it would have been about office chairs, right? And it just came because it was like, I don’t know, something about the pen. And then what you’re saying about the transcription process, I find that there are more surprises when I’m pen to paper.

Yes, and what you’re saying about the vulnerability speaks to—you know, when you were talking about the process of writing the book, and how I was able to do that certain thing I wasn’t able to do, and I did them. Here’s a concrete example, because I always love it when people give concrete examples. I had sent, I don’t know how many drafts, whatever draft to my agent at the time. He hadn’t become my agent yet, but I sent it to him, and he said, “This draft is almost there. The reader is going to want to know more than ‘and then we had sex.'”

He said, “You do that often.” And he was right. And I’m like, “Well, we did, and I’m leaving the room now, right? Like, I don’t want to go there.” And it really took what it took with therapy, with my journey, with five years into it towards the end, so that I went back in those scenes to be with them, and I had concrete exercises that my therapist did to capture that and that vulnerability. And even then, I held back a little. And I remember my mentor. I remember bringing my pages to Jill. She’s here [raising up a copy of Jill’s book]. She passed away at 80-something earlier this year, but she was my mentor. And even in her 80s, bringing her these pages, these raw sex pages, she’s like, “Something’s missing.” And I’m like, “How do you know I was not being completely honest, not completely vulnerable?”

Lisa Cooper Ellison [19:19]
I’m curious, when you think about the sex scenes in particular, they’re very hard to write for a variety of different reasons. Some of it has to do with how we feel about sex and how our histories impact that, but also just the technicality of writing something that doesn’t read as very mechanical. So, writing sex scenes can be tricky because it’s not just about the vulnerability, it’s about the mechanics. When you think about your vulnerability and those sex scenes, in particular, the adult sex scenes, when you say that it wasn’t vulnerable enough, what do you mean?

Hannah Sward [ 19:54]
I wasn’t giving specifics. I was holding back. So, holding back the specifics. Yes, I’ve said this before in podcasts, but this example is always the one that I think of. I brought my pages to my mentor, and it was about hotel rooms in Los Angeles, the Peninsula. I still remember it. And there was a scene in that hotel room, and it was a disturbing evening. And as it was, I felt like it was still disturbing. I wrote it, but I was omitting something, I held it back because I was ashamed. I had such deep shame about it, and so it was the specifics. It was two or three sentences. It wasn’t even about the writing, but it was about, “What am I not saying?” And that the power of an incredible editor—that she knew.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [20:43]
What was it like to finally get those three sentences down?

Hannah Sward [20:47]
When I was going back in to flesh it out, I was at the point in therapy where I was able to sit with myself. I was given an exercise of making sure I was in the room, so concrete exercises about looking—means putting my feet flat on the floor, hands to thighs, and rubbing them—getting in my body. So, I did that. Go into the pages, write it, check in with myself. And that sounds like a lot in three pages. But, you know, I don’t know if it was necessarily three sentences how I wrote it initially, and then coming out of it and doing the same thing. Sounds very kind of… what does that have to do with writing? I think…

Lisa Cooper Ellison [21:30]
It has everything to do with writing, right? So, what it sounds like is that your therapist, whether they’re a Somatic Experiencing person or not, had you do some somatic exercises that allowed you to be in the room. And you know, one thing that can happen when someone has experienced sexual abuse, especially in childhood, is that we leave our bodies all the time. Yeah, and so it makes sense to me that—this may or may not be your experience, but it is a common experience—that, you know, if you’ve left your body in childhood, when you get back in these same types of experiences, whether you want them or not, you also leave. That’s just a common thing. And so, if you’re leaving in the actual experience, it makes sense to me that a part of you would leave when you try to write that experience.

Hannah Sward [22:21]
That’s why it took so many years to come to that. I could not have written it any sooner. Which brings me to, like, that whole compare and despair and getting the story out and needing to have it on the shelf, honor the journey, right? And I kept needing to come back to that. And that’s exactly it, you know, when I first started therapy, when I was in about, you know what the book is dedicated with sitting in the hours, I didn’t know when my therapist would say, “You’re not in the room.” I understood, but I didn’t feel it. I said, “I don’t like it when you say that.” Like, I just did not like it. And it took me a long time to come back in the room and then to start to notice when I was detached. So going back into the sex scenes and getting in my body was crucial. And you articulate it so well that it’s like, “Oh, it has everything to do with writing.” Because when I was working in or working in the sex trade, I left my body, yeah. So, it’s like, how can I write what I can’t feel? So, I started writing that I was leaving my body. But it took the understanding as well of knowing that that’s what I was doing so I could write from this place. You know, one of the things, one of the pushbacks I got with the book was, especially in the earlier chapters, there’s not insight. It’s like writing from a trauma perspective. That’s the intention. I didn’t want to fill it in with the insights.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [23:50]
And I appreciate that you didn’t, because it allowed me to see the world through this child’s eyes and experience that child’s innocence and how that innocence was dashed through a very specific experience, but then again and again as different betrayals happened, or confusing things happened. And so, I’m glad that you made that choice. We’ve talked about your writing process, the beginning of the process. How did you take something which I imagine had many thousands of words and then distill it down? How did you go about thinking about a specific chapter and weeding out the extra?

Hannah Sward [24:35]
Once I started to kind of see it take shape, I always thought that it’s clipping along. I was so overwhelmed with all of it. I mean, when you’re looking at pages that are just like a big mess, I was so overwhelmed. The overwhelm made me not want to sit down. I didn’t believe I could do it. I knew I couldn’t do it. I’m like, “I can’t do this. I’m not a plot and structure writer.” I did envy, and I still envy writers who can write an outline now, right? Which I did with one book, just to see if I could do it. And I have to say, from my experience, it was easier. It was easier, but again, I saw them as clipping along, and I distilled it down because that’s really what I found was easiest and what my memory kind of sought, and I also saw it as a way of capturing a little bit, moving it along, moving along, moving along. Yeah, it was an organic process. It wasn’t intentional until it came out. And I also really considered the reader. I know for myself. You know, if I’m in a bookstore and I’ll open it to the middle and see if I’m taken in And I wanted, in a way, each story— I mean, not that they’re all self-contained, because there are 75 chapters, that’d be a lot of self-contained. But I wanted each one to kind of stand on its own. And, because I had published some of them. I was writing for a magazine at the time, so it lent itself to that, because in the essay, there’s only so much room depending on the publication. Yeah, so I think in part, because it made it more manageable for me.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [26:15]
Yeah, and I think that’s true for a lot of writers, like when you can whittle away some of that and get to the point, it can be so helpful. And some things that I do personally that help with that process is sometimes I’ll give myself a word count constraint, like it must be this number of words. When you have something that is a certain number of words, every word counts, and it makes you think about, “What is my point?” And I will beat out the chapter, or whatever it is that I’m working on. What I mean by that is, “What is the point here? How does that relate to the next point?” And I can’t do it on the first draft, like you. I envy the people that can do that. This is like second, third, or maybe fifth draft kind of stuff sometimes, yeah? But I will do that, and I’ll say, “Okay, what in this paragraph serves this point?” And if it doesn’t, yeah, pull it out. And I’m wondering how that compares to your process. 

Hannah Sward [27:14]
Very similar. I don’t know if it’s that conscious. When it’s an essay, it’s more conscious, as you did, I think you worked with Noah on your piece for The Huffington Post. That felt more like formulaic, so in a way that was easier. Like, “Does this inform this? Does this inform this?” And I absolutely love what you’re saying about the word count. I love micro fiction. I’m reading a short story collection right now. It’s very short, like one-page stories, and I just love it. I love the ability to be able to capture a whole thing in that constraint, like the Tiny Love Stories for the New York Times.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [27:52]
You had a beautiful one, by the way.

Hannah Sward [27:55]
Thank you.

Hannah Sward [27:57]
And distilling that into 100 words, it’s a puzzle.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [28:03]
What I want writers to hear is that the shorter it is—at least I can say for myself, you know, using those “I” statements—takes a lot more drafts.

Hannah Sward [28:14]
I mean, like, for the LA Times, that one came out of me. I say this, but listen to the bigger point, because people will be like, “Oh, I wrote it in a night.” I did, and it was the first draft, but it was also like, all those months of writing and then it came out like that. But I couldn’t have done it probably without those other months. 

Lisa Cooper Ellison [12:30]

Isn’t it amazing how all that happens? I mean, our subconscious is so smart, like, sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t, but that part of us… oh my gosh.

Hannah Sward [28:41]
Yeah. And it’s so important for me to be reminded of that, and that’s why the conversations are so important with other writers. And we just don’t know what’s going to come from something, because so much of what I write, I’m like, “Well, what’s the point of this?”

Lisa Cooper Ellison [28:54]
Exactly. And it can be such a process. Well, you figured it out with this book, which came out in 2022. So, two years have gone by, and you’re here on my podcast. You have been on many other podcasts. Your book has been reviewed in many places. A lot of people are curious about not just the process, you know, when you’re writing a book and then you get your book published, that’s its own journey. But then after your book ends, or at least we’ll say it’s reached its destination. You can hold it in your hand, then it takes on its own life. I’m curious to know about the post-publication life of your book, because it seems to have this interesting momentum. And as you’re talking about this, what are the doors that have opened for you as a result of having published this book?

Hannah Sward [29:44]
Oh my God, that’s been a complete surprise. And one of the things that was shared with me when I was writing it is you don’t know what your trajectory will be, right? And somehow, I got open to the self-promotion. I don’t know when that happened, because I was not open to it before. Like, “Oh, you’re good at it.” I’m like, “No, I’m not. I’m not.” I didn’t have Instagram. Months before the book came out, I had zero Instagram. I was not even open to being on it. However, I would not have connected with you, right? 

The biggest surprise is conversations like this. The community that has grown from it is an unexpected thing. For example, in June, I was invited because of a C-SPAN Book TV panel I had done. Anyway, it’s a long story, but I ended up going to DC in June for World Without Exploitation, which is a huge conference of lawmakers and women who had been sex trafficked. And the fact that I got invited—I get chills now—that I got invited to be on the main stage and speak with these two incredible women. Like, one that does this foundation in India with, you know, helping young girls get out of that life. And another one who founded an organization—like, what am I doing on a stage with these two incredible women, right? And so, things like that, I think, too. Well, most surprising, most recently, is the reading that I did at Barnes & Noble. And especially being, you know, I want to tell the reason I’m a small press author. It’s a one-man show, so that means a lot of the promoting has been on my end. But I have not done it alone at all. It’s all been word of mouth. I haven’t pitched any, as an example, podcasts. It’s come through community and engagement, and not necessarily with the intention of where that’s going to lead, but truly engaging and surprises have just been many, and again, the Barnes & Noble testament to that, because to get that, I had only done one other LA reading. I had gone on a book tour, but I kept LA to one, because it’s a lot of work. And so, with Barnes & Noble, I did pitch bookstores. I pitched—that’s different than podcasts—and it took a while with Barnes & Noble, but I ended up having 100 people there, and that was shocking to me. And that’s all because of community. It was not advertised. It wasn’t like my name and where the Noble didn’t attract anyone. I shouldn’t say anyone, but I doubt it.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [32:28]
Yeah, and I think what you said is so important about community, and what I hope listeners hear is that it’s not about that transactional style of community. I’m going to meet you, you’re going to do this thing for me, but really say, “How can I know you?” And then figuring out, where is it that you can know people? And that’s going to be different for each person.

Hannah Sward [32:51]
That’s right. And in reflecting on the book, I mean, I’ve been fortunate that there’s a lot of themes in this book, because I think of my next book coming out, and I don’t see it having this journey of this book. I just don’t see that. And I certainly didn’t see it for this, though, so who knows? 

Hannah Sward [33:09]
Oh, the other thing that I think is important, and I don’t always do this at all, but it’s something that’s really important for me to remind myself is, what’s my intention? You know, I do believe in a God, a universe. So, it’s like during the tour, I prayed, “Please show me where I can best be of service.” And so, in the book tour, it became more than about the book; it became about so many relationships that I can’t even tell you that transpired, where I got to help two family members because I connected with them, and I hadn’t met them before, because I was in those cities, and I stayed with them. Both lost their sons in that time, or one before, one after. And how does that happen? Right? And that is because of the book, but it’s tied into something bigger that…

Lisa Cooper Ellison [34:05]
That is so beautiful. And what I love about it is that you brought a specific kind of energy, and that energy wasn’t about, “Please buy my book and please boost my book sales.” It wasn’t that kind of energy, which, of course, every author is going to be thinking about that a little bit, you know, it’s not like you don’t think about it. And yet, you opened yourself up, yeah, you know, “How can this book be of service to others?” And you slipped in there that you’re working on something else. And you know, that’s another question that a lot of listeners have. Sure, you’re working so hard, you’re writing one book, but once you get that done, what’s next? So, I know that people can sometimes be a little cagey about sharing, you know, topically, what they’re working on. People are like, “Let me tell you.” So, share in your own range. But what are you working on now? And how is that informed by the experience that you’ve had with Strip?

Hannah Sward [35:01]
That’s a good question. I don’t know how it’s informed by it, because I don’t—it’s a very, very different book. I’m going back to my first love of short stories. Short stories, notoriously, everyone will say this, but they said about memoir, “Won’t sell.” I don’t know, but it informs it in that, I think, you know what it does, in the feeling that it gives. I have more faith. I didn’t have faith that this would be on the shelves. It was a really challenging path with getting it published. And I just want to stress that to the listeners, and I’m someone that really does the work with the research. When press would reach out, I would talk to the authors. I didn’t jump into any yeses as much as I wanted, like, “Oh, this is it.” You know, I had two different agents, and there are many ways to go, right? Yeah. So, what I’m working on next is a short story collection. I actually started it 24 years ago. You know, if you had asked me when I was 35, “Oh, it’s done,” you know, “I did that.” Did it? No. No. It’s back. And a lot of them were published separately over the years, but it’s a short story collection about love, jealousy, and affairs, and very different from Strip. This informs the journey as I just—I have more faith in it, and I do feel more confident in terms of not necessarily the writing, right? I come back to the page and I’m like, “What is going on here? This is terrible,” and all that stuff, but more faith that it will find a home.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [36:39]
Yes, I often tell writers that your first draft, especially of a book, proves to you that you can write a book, right? It helps you have that vision of like, “I can make it to this finish line,” because you have before, so you have that muscle memory. But I wonder, because when I was doing research, one of the things you said was Strip helped you find your voice. And I wonder if you now find that because you found your voice, you’re able to use it in new ways as you work in this short story collection, which is a different genre. It’s beyond just knowing, like, “Oh yeah, I published a book before. I know I can do it again.” But I’m approaching this with a different sense of power. 

Hannah Sward [37:19]
I mean, it’s interesting, because a lot of these stories, like, my voice is very similar to what it was in my 20s. There are more layers. As an example, some of the stories that were published that will be in the collection, or are in the collection, I went back in, they did not hold up in my eyes. So being published didn’t mean for me that it was done. There needed to be more layers, and more needed to be pushed further in terms of where the story could go and the language, but more about what is it I’m trying to say here. I think that’s the depth that they have that’s changed.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [37:59]
I’m excited to read it because I am a big fan of your work, and you’ve shared so much writing wisdom. I’m curious, as we wrap up, when you think about writing a book as a marathon and then supporting a book as a second marathon. You are in year two of that. How are you supporting your resilience as you continue to do this work?

Hannah Sward [38:23]
Nature. Yesterday, I went on a hike, and I just, you know, like, the whole time I’m working on a story in my head, and I’m like, “Just stop.” And I made the hike much longer, and I stopped, and I looked at the birds and I—and it also starts. It helps me settle. That’s one of the most important things, and the resilience—I would not be able to do it without my writing group. When I say writing group, there’s two of us, you know, there’s enough. We’ve been together for a long time, but, yeah, well, two other women and me, and having that, like, “Keep going, keep going.” Yes.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [38:57]
Shout out to the writing groups.

Hannah Sward [39:01]
Oh yeah, because I don’t know what I would have without mine. And then I read it out loud, and just before meeting with you, I was meeting with my writing partner.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [39:07]
I love how they normalize this experience for us, and it’s just so healing and nurturing. Well, if people want to buy a copy of Strip and they want to connect with you, what are the best ways for them to do that?

Hannah Sward [39:20]
I think Instagram at @hannahswardauthor, so my name, which is spelled like Hannah, and then sward author. And in terms of buying it, bookshop.org. It’s always wonderful to support independent bookstores. If you’re in LA, a lot of bookstores here have it. I don’t know about other cities. And then, of course, Amazon, and I think, for right now, and I’m going to probably have the publisher see if he can extend the Kindle to 99 cents. I like to have that option for people. And, libraries, if you’re trying to save money, you know, you can order it from a library. People are like, “Yeah, don’t you get more money if you buy it somewhere?” Like, “I get $1.” I don’t really care. Or like, “It’s not really about the money.”

Lisa Cooper Ellison [40:04]
It never is when it comes to publishing, but when you order at a library, what happens is that you get to enjoy the book, and then someone who may or may not be able to afford it also gets the opportunity. So, it’s the gift that keeps on giving. And yes, support your local bookstore, you never know what role they’re going to play in your life. And I am so excited, and I hope that you’re able to extend that 99-cent promotion, because that would just make it a nice gift for people as well. Well, I want to thank you so much for being on the podcast. It has been an absolute delight to talk with you today.

Hannah Sward [40:39]
I just—this has been so wonderful. Thank you for having me and to listeners. Thank you for listening and to you in your own writing. Thank you very much. I appreciate that you.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [40:49]
Thank you!